Surprising Facts And Symptoms About ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder)

The Fountain of Youth World Summit with Tellman Knudson, a NOP expert hypnotist with a personal and professional interest in ADD and the founder of Instant ADD Success.

Kevin: I’m going to get right into this so why don’t you start with just a little bit about your story, your background and how we are here on this call now.

Tellman: Sure, well, it’s pretty interesting. Basically what it comes down to is -- in college I was studying peak performance in athletes. I wanted to be a better distance runner. I went to a school where I could actually work on creating my own major. This Marlborough College was fantastic place but while I was there, I started studying brain waves, ultra fits of awareness, alpha, beta, theta, delta, the whole thing and I stumbled upon self hypnosis first and what was happening as I was reading some books, doing some research, I said; “Wow! This looks like a pretty cool technique, let me try it”. As I said I was running data consistently, day after day after day. All of a sudden 95 percent of the time I would go out running, I would be running at absolute peak levels and it was just an amazing experience. What ended up happening was, I’m out there on a two and a half hour run, going full board the whole time and feeling like a powerhouse and I said; “Gees! Why can’t I just do this when I am trying to complete a paper”? [laughter] I was diagnosed with ADD when I was really young; you know it was very frustrating. Learning and schooling is very challenging for me. So, I went back and finished that run and I sat down and tried to read a book. And sure enough after about 10 minutes, my mind was wondering and my eyes were scanning over the page but not a single word was actually being absorbed by my brain. I said; “Oh! There it is again. You know what -- let me try that technique I was working on while I was running”. And I mentally walked through the exact same technique and sure enough my brain clicked on and I read that book from cover to cover and I remembered the entire thing. I don’t claim to have a photographic memory, but it was the best reading experience I had ever had in my entire life and I said, “Wow! Maybe there is something to this”.

I ended up continuing to apply and adopt hypnosis and self-hypnosis techniques to my mind because I knew that there must be a way to use my brain effectively because I had proven it to myself in terms of training and mental training as an athlete. So I actually got obsessed with the mind and what it could accomplish specifically as it related to Attention Deficit Disorder. And I went through this incredible journey where I started studying hypnosis and I ended up becoming a certified hypno-therapist, I got trained in NLP, and that’s what I ended up focusing on in school with all my research, then I went on to start six hypnotherapy businesses, really focused on helping people with Attention Deficit to use attention deficit as a strength to accomplish whatever it is they wanted to in their lives.

Kevin: Well, let’s talk about Attention Deficit Disorder and how people are first diagnosed, what goes through their minds and then will take them up through how you can become a success with it.

Tellman: Well, first of all, for a lot of people it comes before diagnosis. Right! Whether they are an adult or whether they are a kid, they suspect they have ADD and so often times they go in and they get tested.

Kevin: Um.

Tellman: Now, it’s important to realize that I am not a doctor, I cannot diagnose anyone with ADD, no would I want to. When people are thinking about ADD they are; “Oh no! If I have ADD I’m totally screwed”. [laughter] “I am in a terrible situation my life is going to be a mess and I’m not going to be able to get a job, I’m not going to be able to graduate from school and I’m not going to be able to do X, Y Z, 1, 2, 3” - over and over and over again. What I would really recommend, whether you suspect you have ADD, whether you know you have ADD, it’s almost irrelevant and here is why. Almost everyone in the face of the earth has ADD symptoms. That’s just the deal. Everyone is born with ADD symptoms. The real question is; how many symptoms do you have. To be diagnosed basically just means you have a checklist and you are going down the checklist and the doctor is asking you a bunch of questions and they check up a certain number of boxes, and if you have a certain percentage of boxes that are checked, ooh! You are diagnosed with ADD.

Kevin: It’s really that simple.

Tellman: It really is and you know it could be the day, it could be how much coffee you had before, it could be whether you are stressed out that day, it could make all the difference. So, it doesn’t matter whether you are diagnosed or not, the real question you have to ask yourself is, “Look, do you have problems focusing?” If you do, we have good news because we can teach you how to use the brain you already have to go out and kick some serious success butt. [laughter] Again the real question isn’t whether or not you have ADD. The question is, how are you going to use your existing brain in order to achieve want you want to achieve. Does that make sense?

Kevin: Absolutely. What do you start doing? What is the first step for someone who realizes that they are going crazy because things are firing up them all the time and they just can’t seem to get their head around anything.

Tellman: The first thing that I would say is there is a very distinct difference between what we call multi-tasking and being easily distracted. OK. There is a very distinct difference but it is extraordinarily subtle if you don’t know what to look for. If you do know what to look for it is easier to spot. If you don’t you are in the dark. So here is how it works; what I would ask you is when you are easily distracted, you are going from thing - to thing - to thing – to thing – to thing. Right!

Kevin: Um.

Tellman: And everyone has felt easily distracted at points in their lives. So what I would ask you is; when you feeling easily distracted are you accomplishing much? Most people would say no! And here is why; you are going from random thing - to random thing - to random thing - to random thing. Right! That is being easily distracted. And we all have this, whether we are talking about trying to accomplish something very specific in your life or whether we are talking about being highly effective, if we are not able to take those distractions and use them to accomplish something, wel probably won’t get much done. On the other hand, one of the most priced skills that we are looking for today, OK, in jobs especially with technology, is the ability to multi-task. As a matter of fact, they are many, many, many jobs that are out there where employers look for people with ADD. They actually seek them out because they excel in certain types of job positions. We’ll tell you more about that later. Before we do, I’d like to share with you the one concept, the one principal that makes all the difference. See, people who are really good in multi-tasking also go from thing - to thing - to thing –to thing.

Kevin: Um.

Tellman: So what is the difference? Well, I call it the umbrella principle. And the umbrella principle has to do with the types of distractions that you have. Now let me explain. If you group or categorize on purpose the different types of distractions or the different type of things you are working with on a given day, ok, into a series, then what can happen is you can still go from thing – to thing – to thing – to thing – to thing, but you are making a forward motion with each one of those things to accomplish one goal. That is what I call Intentional Distraction. So when you are intentionally distracting yourself from thing – to thing – to thing – to thing, before you get randomly distracted you make massive progress, massive progress. And here is one more principle, one more technique; most people with ADD respond to pressure specifically time or deadline pressure extremely, extremely well. Not all, most.

Kevin: Interesting.

Tellman: OK. Nothing we are talking about here today is universally applicable. Ok. Anyone that tells you they have a success principle, a success idea that can be applied effectively in every situation, it’s just not true, people are different. Right! So the question then mainly comes on; “how can I succeed?’ Again, very, very, very simple. If you line up a bunch of distractions that will move you toward that one goal you are trying to achieve and you put time pressure on each one of the tasks that you are working on in a very specific amount of time – I’ll explain how you do this in a minute. You’ll get ten times more done than any of your linear thinking counterparts. By the way, you probably think linear people are fairly boring if you have a lot of ADD tendencies. Ok. Boring, boring, boring. Now this is the key. Right! It’s been said that as many as 80 percent of the people in prison today are diagnosable with ADD.

Kevin: Wow.

Tellman: That’s a lot of people with ADD under one roof.

Kevin: Wow.

Tellman: But if you start thinking about it makes sense. Like to take risks, they don’t like to follow the rules. Right! They like to do things on their own schedule and in their own way without anybody telling them what to do. Probably they aren’t quite good at holding their own jobs.

Kevin: Sounds like I should be in prison. [laughs]

Tellman: Actually this is a really important point. It’s also been said that as many as 80 percent of entrepreneurs are diagnosable with ADD.

Kevin: Gotcha!

Tellman: They like to do their own thing, they don’t like to follow the rules, they like to take risks, Ok. There is only one difference between the people in prison and the people who are entrepreneurs out there. And it’s not they didn’t get caught. [laughter]

Tellman: It’s making a choice. Very similar to the type of choice you have to make with intentional distraction. The choice is this; are you going to do it legally or not? Because you get just as much as of a rush out of putting together an entrepreneurial venture that makes you a million dollars as you can from going out and selling a bunch of cocaine on the street and hoping you don’t get caught by the police. [laughter]

Kevin: Right:

Tellman: It’s just as exciting because you know you are not going to get into trouble if you win.